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Ahmadinejad speaks but fails to provoke a walkout at the UN Assembly

Will Pavia

September 27 2012, 12:13am, The Times

President Ahmadinejad: did not call for the annihilation of IsraelAtta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

At a meeting on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked by Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, to consider “the potentially harmful consequences of inflammatory rhetoric”.

Since then the President of Iran has been busy testing the frayed international commitment to free speech, dismissing “the threats of the Zionists” and describing the nation of Israel as a “fake regime” and a temporary aberration in world history.

Yet in his final appearance before the General Assembly, Mr Ahmadinejad delivered what Western diplomats regarded as a relatively benign address. He still called for the upturning of the world order and portrayed democracies in America and Europe as corrupt. He suggested that the world’s media was in thrall to “the hegemonic policies…

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